Antenna Video

2003
Video and Performance

Antenna is a 3 minute video piece that explores ideas regarding communication devices, and if technology makes us closer or farther from one another. The piece is a document of a performance that I did, where I built a tin can telephone, went up to a mountain, and spun it over my head. I became an “antenna.” The video visually explores pace and time. Some scenes were made with stop motion techniques and move quickly. Other scenes are slow: an image of the sky, a piece of string, a moving arm slowed to 75% of its original speed.

The audio in the work is a song I wrote and performed. Some of the song lyrics are, “My time is well spent. I go fast each day. I type my words and send them on their way. I like to read my palm. I dial to save time. Our waves go out into the sky.” I did all of the videography in the work, using a tripod and a remote control unit. The piece was shot in Hessental, a small town near Stuttgart, and also in Mittenwald, a town in the Bavarian region of Germany.